National contexts influencing principals’ time use: Economic development, societal culture, and educational system

This study, as a first of its kind, examines relationships between principals’ time use and national contexts. Specifically, this paper explores cross-national variance in the amount of hours principals spend for their main duties and investigates how the amount of hours they spend is influenced by key national contexts—i.e. economic development, societal culture, and educational system. Furthermore, this paper seeks to illuminate how the three national-level contexts influence principals’ time allocation for their major realms of responsibility such as curriculum/pedagogy development, administration, and relationships with parent/community when key organizational-level contexts are controlled for. For the current research, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 was used. The final analysis using a two level hierarchical linear model (HLM) included 5,297 principals from 34 societies. There were four major findings. First, there was substantial cross-nation variance in the amount of hours principals spend for their schools. More importantly, a substantive portion of variance in the amount of hours principal spend was explained by the level of economic development; the more developed societies are, the more hours principals spend for their schools. Second, the level of national economy was, however, negatively associated with principals’ time allocation for curriculum/pedagogy development. Third, national cultures influenced principals’ time allocation for curriculum and pedagogy development, and relationships with parent/community. Specifically, the more hierarchical societies are, the less time principals spend for curriculum/pedagogy development and relationships with parent/community. Finally, principals in highly standardized schooling systems in terms of the presence of national exam, national textbooks, and national curriculum tended to spend less time for administrative duties than their counterparts in less standardized schooling systems. Implications for research are briefly discussed.